Curator Watchlist
A maximalist, four-hour romantic apocalypse that mixes sex comedy, religious guilt, crime melodrama, and martial-arts absurdity into something wildly singular. It’s messy by design, but the energy, invention, and emotional payoff make it a standout for adventurous viewers.
Where to watch: Buy
Sat · 3h 57m
Director: Sion Sono
Starring: Takahiro Nishijima, Hikari Mitsushima, Sakura Ando
The story of a teenage boy called Yu, who falls for Yoko, a girl he runs into while working as an upskirt photographer in an offshoot of the porn industry. His attempts to woo her are complicated by a spot of cross-dressing – which convinces Yoko that she is lesbian – dalliances with kung-fu and crime, and a constant struggle with Catholic guilt.
Sion Sono
Takahiro Nishijima, Hikari Mitsushima, Sakura Ando
A maximalist, four-hour romantic apocalypse that mixes sex comedy, religious guilt, crime melodrama, and martial-arts absurdity into something wildly singular. It’s messy by design, but the energy, invention, and emotional payoff make it a standout for adventurous viewers.
Love Exposure is the kind of film that feels like it was smuggled in from another planet. Sion Sono turns a premise about teenage lust and Catholic guilt into a sprawling, hyperactive melodrama that keeps mutating into something stranger: slapstick, crime saga, martial-arts farce, devotional fever dream, and wounded love story all at once. It is obscene, sincere, ridiculous, and oddly moving, sometimes in the same scene.
What makes it work is not just shock value, but commitment. The film keeps escalating its own absurdity until the chaos starts to feel like a genuine emotional language, especially around shame, desire, and the need to be seen. It’s overstuffed and deliberately excessive, yet the excess is the point: every detour feels like another attempt to break through repression.
This is not an easy recommendation, but it is an easy one to admire. For viewers willing to surrender to its length and volatility, it delivers a rare mix of provocation and catharsis, with enough invention to justify its legendary reputation.
Edgar Cochran ✝️🍋 (5★) · 6089 likes
WARNING. The following movie has: 1) 237 minutes in length2) The movie title appearing after one hour of running time3) A drag4) Tosatsu5) Kung-fu6) Sex7) Genital gore8) Ultraviolence9) Lesbians10) A "Virgin Mary"11) Erections12) Kung Fu ass-kicking female teens13) Psychotic menopausal female maniacs14) Pornographic furniture15) A Joshuu 701-gô: Sasori (1972) tribute with a pinky film spoof character called "Miss Scorpion"16) Love17) Romance18) "Exposure"19)… more
Simone (4.5★) · 3564 likes
I never thought I'd love a four hour movie about an erection so much. Sometimes life surprises you.
tru (5★) · 1966 likes
they should’ve just stopped making movies after love exposure. pack up, go home, it’s over, nothing will ever top this.
autocinephilia · 1807 likes
Love Exposure has the greatest story I have ever seen depicted on film. The movie's scope is incredible: a four hour love story that weaves religious dogma, ultra-violence, perversion, and a million other topics into a flawless tapestry. This is a film that needs to be experienced in one devoted play-though, free of distractions, so that you can get invested in the complex characters and their tragically doomed relationships. Like my Daisies review, I will first discuss why you need
YI JIAN (4.5★) · 1427 likes
Why pray? Why sin? Why disguise yourself, dress up as a pervert? Why yell when you can speak, run when you can walk, cry when you can smile? Why kill, bleed, drool? Why give up on your life and your family and your religion? Why betray your God? Why fall apart, beyond any hope of reassembly? Why struggle at all? Because love. Love sits above all else. A cheesy message, but one fucking hell of a delivery.
For extreme Japanese transgression, grotesque humor, and a willingness to push violence into nightmare territory.
A slow-burn descent from romance into dread, with the same uneasy blend of desire and punishment.
Another boundary-smashing family satire from Japanese cult cinema, mixing taboo, comedy, and shock.
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A ferocious cult object that turns bodily obsession and mania into pure cinematic delirium.
If the appeal is unhinged invention and tonal whiplash, this is a perfect companion piece.
A musical black comedy that embraces absurdity, family dysfunction, and gleeful tonal chaos.
For explosive Japanese excess, youth violence, and a heightened emotional register.
A brutal, hyper-stylized descent into corruption, obsession, and moral collapse.
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For the collision of adolescent longing, repression, and stylized melancholy, though far more restrained.
sexual obsession, Catholic guilt, identity and disguise, desire and repression, family trauma, cult behavior, violence and redemption, romantic idealism
cult film, Japanese cinema, black comedy, melodrama, transgressive, coming-of-age, religious guilt, erotic absurdism, martial arts, epic runtime